5.1. Adding resources to Sophie books

5.1.1 Adding single resource

In this release of Sophie, to add media to a book you should use the Insert menu item. Clicking Insert reveals a number of options: Text, Image, Audio, Video, Audio Record, Book, PDF, HTML, Plain Text, RTF and Browser:

../../images/InsertMenu.png

If you select Image, PDF, RTF, Plain Text, HTML, or Book, you'll be prompted to locate an appropriate file on your computer using a file dialogue box which looks like this:

../../images/SimpleFileDialog.png

When a file is selected, it will be imported into the currently selected Sophie book.

If you select Video or Audio you'll be prompted again to locate an appropriate file on your computer, but using a more complex file dialogue box which looks like this:

../../images/ComplexFileDialog.png

This dialogue allows you to choose how large resources will be imported. Choosing Embed will put the resource into the book file. This is convenient for small media files. Choosing Link will link the resource from the filesystem: this allows linking large resources without making the book size large. When this is selected, Copy to "_files" is available, which will copy the resource to a special directory that will need to be kept with the book. When "Import resource" is clicked, the file will be imported into the current Sophie book.

Insert > Audio Record allows you to record audio; to learn about that, go here.

Insert > Browser Frame will insert a browser frame, which displays a frame in which a browser shows a specific URL; learn more about that here.

The types of media that Sophie currently supports are:

A complete list of the audio/video formats that Sophie supports can be found here. While PDFs can be imported in this release, only the first page will be displayed if there is more than one page in the file. Importing text files (RTF, plain text, or HTML) creates a new text frame with the imported file; to learn more about importing text, go here.

When media is imported into Sophie, it is displayed in the resources palette of the resources tab in the right flap; there, it can be filtered by media type. It can also be dragged from the resources palette to another page of the Sophie book. When a frame is deleted from the page of a Sophie book, the resource is not deleted: it remains in the resources, where it can be used again.

Adding multiple resources

You can add multiple resources at once by using the Import Resources button in the resources palette in the right flap. It looks like this:

../../images/ImportResources.png

This will open a file dialogue in which you can choose multiple files, folders, or zip archives to be added to your book. Note that these will not appear on the page, but in the resources palette. After importing, you can drag them from the resources palette to pages of your Sophie book to insert them.